Mr. Mike's Mondo Video
Encyclopedia
Mr. Mike's Mondo Video was a 1979
movie conceived by Saturday Night Live
writer/featured player Michael O'Donoghue
.
documentary Mondo Cane
, showing people doing weird stunts. The logo for this film copies the original Mondo Cane logo. Also, since Mondo Cane featured the hit song "More," which was initially an instrumental song with words added later, O'Donoghue and writer Emily Prager
(who also acted in the film) took the instrumental song "Telstar
" by Joe Meek
and wrote lyrics for it, to create "The Haunting Theme Song." It was sung by crooner Julius La Rosa
, who had also recorded "More." The song is sung in English during the opening credits, and in nonsense Italian over the closing credits.
Many cast members of Saturday Night Live, including Dan Aykroyd
, Jane Curtin
, Laraine Newman
, Bill Murray
, Don Novello
and Gilda Radner
appear. People who had previously hosted SNL, or would go on to host (such as Carrie Fisher
, Margot Kidder
and Teri Garr
) made cameo appearances in this film. Others who appeared in the film include musicians Sid Vicious
, Paul Shaffer
, Debbie Harry
, Root Boy Slim
, and Klaus Nomi
; and model Patty Oja
.
The film is largely plotless; a series of vignettes linked together by interstitial pieces featuring Mr. Mike discussing how upsetting and odd the sequences were. He introduces some of the pieces via voice-over, and some open with no introduction.
Sequences include:
television special that would have aired in place of SNL during one of its live breaks. Because of some of the racier elements of the show, NBC declared it inappropriate for the network (in the wake of a ratings slump they experienced at the time) and promptly canceled it.
Shortly thereafter, independent studio New Line Cinema
acquired the rights to Mondo Video, and converted the videotape master to 35mm film for theatrical release. To pad the program to feature length, filmmaker Walter Williams created a special Mr. Bill Show episode, combining footage from his past Mr. Bill shorts from SNL with new wraparound scenes, to present at the head of the film as a short subject
. Also, cowriter Mitchell Glazer stated in the DVD's audio commentary that many scenes were added to pad the film's runtime to the required 90 minutes for theatrical releases.
The film would eventually be seen on television, albeit on pay cable and syndication with several cuts, such as the non sequitur "Dream Sequences". It would also show up on home video in the early 1980s
through Mike Nesmith's Pacific Arts
label.
In January 2009, it was released on DVD by Shout! Factory
. The DVD release mutes the infamous "My Way" segment, and removes Mr. Mike's lead-in to the "Church of the Jack Lord" segment due to the inability of Shout! Factory to get the rights to use the Hawaii 5-O theme song.
performing the classic song "My Way
" from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, which had not yet been released in America at the time. On the initial Pacific Arts home video release, the audio is muted before Sid begins singing. A crawl
appears onscreen explaining that the owners of the song's copyright wouldn't permit audio of the performance to be included on the tape: "It wasn't a case of money," the crawl explains, "They wouldn't even discuss it." The sound returns when the performance switches to a heavy punk rock guitar riff, and Sid pulling out a gun, firing (presumably blanks) into the audience, flipping them the bird
, and walking off.
The muted audio and explanatory crawl were carried over on the 2009 Shout! Factory release, despite the fact that the Sid Vicious version of the song can be seen and heard, in its entirety, in the DVD release of The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle, also released by Shout! Factory.
1979 in film
The year 1979 in film involved some significant events.- Major events :* March 5 - Production begins on Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.* May 25 - Alien, a landmark of the science fiction genre, is released....
movie conceived by Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
writer/featured player Michael O'Donoghue
Michael O'Donoghue
Michael O'Donoghue was a writer and performer. He was known for his dark and destructive style of comedy and humor, was a major contributor to National Lampoon magazine, and was the first head writer of Saturday Night Live.-Childhood:O'Donoghue was born Michael Henry Donohue in Sauquoit, New York...
.
Plot
Mondo Video was a spoof of the controversial 19621962 in film
The year 1962 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*May - The Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards are officially founded by the Taiwanese government....
documentary Mondo Cane
Mondo cane
Mondo cane is a documentary written and directed by Italian filmmakers Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi and Gualtiero Jacopetti. The film consists of a series of travelogue vignettes that provide glimpses into cultural practices around the world with the intention to shock or surprise Western film...
, showing people doing weird stunts. The logo for this film copies the original Mondo Cane logo. Also, since Mondo Cane featured the hit song "More," which was initially an instrumental song with words added later, O'Donoghue and writer Emily Prager
Emily Prager
- Life and work :Prager grew up in Texas, Taiwan, and Greenwich Village, NY. She is a graduate of The Brearley School, Barnard College and has a Masters Degree in Education...
(who also acted in the film) took the instrumental song "Telstar
Telstar (song)
"Telstar" is a 1962 instrumental record performed by The Tornados. It was the first single by a British band to reach number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, and was also a number one hit in the UK. The record was named after the AT&T communications satellite Telstar, which went into orbit in...
" by Joe Meek
Joe Meek
Robert George "Joe" Meek was a pioneering English record producer and songwriter....
and wrote lyrics for it, to create "The Haunting Theme Song." It was sung by crooner Julius La Rosa
Julius La Rosa
Julius La Rosa is an American traditional popular music singer who has worked in both radio and television since the 1950s.-Early years and big break:...
, who had also recorded "More." The song is sung in English during the opening credits, and in nonsense Italian over the closing credits.
Many cast members of Saturday Night Live, including Dan Aykroyd
Dan Aykroyd
Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM is a Canadian comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, winemaker and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter.-Early...
, Jane Curtin
Jane Curtin
Jane Therese Curtin is an American actress and comedienne. She is commonly referred to as Queen of the Deadpan.First coming to prominence as an original cast member on Saturday Night Live in 1975, she went on to win back-to-back Emmy Awards for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series on the 1980s...
, Laraine Newman
Laraine Newman
Laraine Newman is an American comedienne, actress, and writer, and was part of the original Saturday Night Live cast.-Personal life:...
, Bill Murray
Bill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
, Don Novello
Don Novello
Don Novello is an American writer, film director, producer, actor, singer, and comedian. Novello is best known for his work on NBC's Saturday Night Live, from 1977 until 1980, and then 1985 until 1986, often as the character "Father Guido Sarducci". Novello has appeared as "Sarducci" on many...
and Gilda Radner
Gilda Radner
Gilda Susan Radner was an American comedian and actress, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, for which she won an Emmy Award in 1978.-Early life:...
appear. People who had previously hosted SNL, or would go on to host (such as Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Frances Fisher is an American actress, novelist, screenwriter, and lecturer. She is most famous for her portrayal of Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy, her bestselling novel Postcards from the Edge, for which she wrote the screenplay to the film of the same name, and her...
, Margot Kidder
Margot Kidder
Margaret Ruth "Margot" Kidder is a Canadian-born American actress. She is perhaps best known for playing Lois Lane in the four Superman movies opposite Christopher Reeve, a role that brought her to widespread recognition....
and Teri Garr
Teri Garr
-Early life:Garr was born in Lakewood, Ohio in 1947. Her father, Eddie Garr , was a vaudeville performer, comedian and actor whose career peaked when he briefly took over the lead role in the Broadway drama Tobacco Road...
) made cameo appearances in this film. Others who appeared in the film include musicians Sid Vicious
Sid Vicious
Sid Vicious was an English musician best known as the bassist of the influential punk rock group Sex Pistols...
, Paul Shaffer
Paul Shaffer
Paul Allen Wood Shaffer, CM is a Canadian musician, actor, voice actor, author, comedian, and composer who has been David Letterman's sidekick since 1982.-Early years:...
, Debbie Harry
Debbie Harry
Deborah Ann "Debbie" Harry is an American singer-songwriter and actress, best known for being the lead singer of the punk rock and new wave band Blondie. She has also had success as a solo artist, and in the mid-1990s she performed and recorded as part of The Jazz Passengers...
, Root Boy Slim
Root Boy Slim
Root Boy Slim was the stage name assumed by American musician, Foster MacKenzie III. Born in Asheville, North Carolina, he was raised in suburban Maryland, a few minutes from D.C. after his family relocated there...
, and Klaus Nomi
Klaus Nomi
Klaus Sperber , better known as Klaus Nomi, was a German countertenor noted for his wide vocal range and an unusual, otherworldly stage persona....
; and model Patty Oja
Patty Oja
Patty Oja is a former model and actress best known for her appearance in the film, Eyes of Laura Mars. She also appeared in the film Mr. Mike's Mondo Video, in Redbook and Viva magazines, and on the cover of Mitchell Gray's The Lingerie Book .-External links:...
.
The film is largely plotless; a series of vignettes linked together by interstitial pieces featuring Mr. Mike discussing how upsetting and odd the sequences were. He introduces some of the pieces via voice-over, and some open with no introduction.
Sequences include:
- Aykroyd displaying his webbed toesWebbed toesWebbed toes is the common name for syndactyly affecting the feet. It is characterised by the fusion of two or more digits of the feet. This is normal in many birds, such as ducks; amphibians, such as frogs; and mammals, such as kangaroos...
which he prodded with a screwdriver to prove they were not make-up. - A church that worships Jack LordJack LordJohn Joseph Patrick Ryan , best known by his stage name Jack Lord, was an American television, film, and Broadway actor. He was known for his starring role as Steve McGarrett in the American television program Hawaii Five-O from 1968 to 1980. Lord appeared in feature films earlier in his career,...
as the one true god (also featuring Dan Aykroyd.) - A French restaurant that prides itself on how poorly it treats American patrons.
- "Dream Sequence", a series of surreal film pieces bracketed by large light-up signs reading "Dream Sequence" and "End Dream Sequence" that tracked towards and away from the camera. One of these was merely performance footage of Klaus Nomi, while another featured home movie footage shot by Emily Prager intercut with stop-motion animation.
- Short films made by other directors. "Cleavage" by Mitchell Kriegman, was a closeup of a hand working its way out from (what was implied to be) between a large pair of breasts, feeling around gently, realizing where it was, and working its way back in. "Crowd Scene Take One", by Andy Aaron and Ernie FosseliusErnie FosseliusErnie Fosselius is an American filmmaker who has largely stayed out of the public eye. He is best known for his satirical spoofs of popular films, including the classic Star Wars parody Hardware Wars.-Film career:...
purported to be a director guiding background actors for a disaster movie scene. "Uncle Si and the Sirens" was an anonymously-directed silent-era "nudie-cutie" short found by SNL alumnus Tom SchillerTom SchillerTom Schiller is an American Emmy Award winning writer best known for his eleven-year stint writing and directing short films for Saturday Night Live...
. - The presentation of a classified government weapons project, "Laserbra 2000". This piece was the last of a triptych of sequences that chronicled the attempts to obtain the classified footage. In the first, the film (secreted in a violin case) was in fact someone's home movies; in the second, the violin case contained a violin. National Lampoon writer Brian McConnachieBrian McConnachieBrian McConnachie is an American humor writer and comedy writer who is also an actor and a children's book author. In 1982 he won an Emmy Award as part of the writing team for SCTV Network, and in 1979 he was nominated for an Emmy as part of the writing team for Saturday Night Live.During the early...
appears in the footage as a scientist.
History
It was originally produced on videotape as an NBCNBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
television special that would have aired in place of SNL during one of its live breaks. Because of some of the racier elements of the show, NBC declared it inappropriate for the network (in the wake of a ratings slump they experienced at the time) and promptly canceled it.
Shortly thereafter, independent studio New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
acquired the rights to Mondo Video, and converted the videotape master to 35mm film for theatrical release. To pad the program to feature length, filmmaker Walter Williams created a special Mr. Bill Show episode, combining footage from his past Mr. Bill shorts from SNL with new wraparound scenes, to present at the head of the film as a short subject
Short subject
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...
. Also, cowriter Mitchell Glazer stated in the DVD's audio commentary that many scenes were added to pad the film's runtime to the required 90 minutes for theatrical releases.
The film would eventually be seen on television, albeit on pay cable and syndication with several cuts, such as the non sequitur "Dream Sequences". It would also show up on home video in the early 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
through Mike Nesmith's Pacific Arts
Pacific Arts Corporation
The Pacific Arts Corporation, Inc. is a company formed by Michael Nesmith circa 1974 to manage and develop media projects, including the medium and the content. The company is associated with a "drawing" dove logo.-History:...
label.
In January 2009, it was released on DVD by Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory is an entertainment company founded in 2003 that was started by Richard Foos , Bob Emmer and Garson Foos initially as a specialty music label...
. The DVD release mutes the infamous "My Way" segment, and removes Mr. Mike's lead-in to the "Church of the Jack Lord" segment due to the inability of Shout! Factory to get the rights to use the Hawaii 5-O theme song.
Sid Vicious appearance
Mondo Video featured Sid ViciousSid Vicious
Sid Vicious was an English musician best known as the bassist of the influential punk rock group Sex Pistols...
performing the classic song "My Way
My Way (song)
"My Way" is a song popularized by Frank Sinatra. Its lyrics were written by Paul Anka and set to music based on the French song "Comme d'habitude" composed in 1967 by Claude François and Jacques Revaux, with lyrics by Claude François and Gilles Thibault. Anka's English lyrics are unrelated to the...
" from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, which had not yet been released in America at the time. On the initial Pacific Arts home video release, the audio is muted before Sid begins singing. A crawl
Scrolling
In computer graphics, filmmaking, television production, and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display. "Scrolling", as such, does not change the layout of the text or pictures, or but incrementally moves the user's view across what is...
appears onscreen explaining that the owners of the song's copyright wouldn't permit audio of the performance to be included on the tape: "It wasn't a case of money," the crawl explains, "They wouldn't even discuss it." The sound returns when the performance switches to a heavy punk rock guitar riff, and Sid pulling out a gun, firing (presumably blanks) into the audience, flipping them the bird
The Bird
"The Bird" is a song from The Time's third album, Ice Cream Castle. The song was initially recorded in the studio in 1983 with all instruments by Prince, except guitar, which was performed by Jesse Johnson. This version was replaced by a live recording with the full band at the First Avenue on...
, and walking off.
The muted audio and explanatory crawl were carried over on the 2009 Shout! Factory release, despite the fact that the Sid Vicious version of the song can be seen and heard, in its entirety, in the DVD release of The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle, also released by Shout! Factory.